Help with wireless please?

Cannot get stable connection on laptop

[BeeJay]

I am not terribly computer [hardware] savvy. Have new Gateway laptop. Bought Linksys router and card. Have AT&T DSL Lite on desk top. Have had trouble with a stable wireless connection to laptop ever since purchase. Replaced AT&T modem once. Router lit up and seems to be working fine. Occasionally can get internet on laptop; but does not hold and constantly losing connection, having to shut down internet and bring it up again, with rare exception. Troublesome every time we try it again. Usually reaches a point where doesn't connect at all. Best trouble-free sessions occurred on same day after talking with Linksys support. Already paid them $10 fee. Keep doing what they told us to. Also received AT&T help initially, even though they're not supposed to help us, according to them. Why is laptop not "holding" its connection and/or settings or whatever it is that makes the wireless thing work? Where can we go for help?

Many thanks.

[bill]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld BeeJay.

It could be any number of issues ranging from hardware, to software, to the connection provided by your ISP. Those are never easy to troubleshoot.

Does the PC work connected to the router with an Ethernet cable?

Can other wireless devices connect to the router?

What OS is the laptop running?

[cmendla]

how far is the laptop from the wireless point? what is between the two? wireless is line of sight and things like walls ane metallic wallpaper can kill your signal

[BeeJay]

“Does the PC work connected to the router with an Ethernet cable?” Don’t know, don’t know if there is an Ethernet cable involved.

We don’t have any other wireless devices.

Don’t know what OS means.

Laptop has been at times on the desk with the desktop as we’ve worked on. Farthest away we ever got was the den. It is next to the office with one ordinary wall in between. No metallic wallpaper. And it HAS worked, but not much and never for long. Even when it connected, it lost it often and frequently.

We’ve been told that the laptop has a wireless thing (?) in it; we didn’t know and purchased a wireless card. So apparently the laptop may be getting confused. Hubby is the guru; he was told to download some stuff to transfer to laptop, which he did, but we can’t get on at all. (It had gotten to the dead point sometime after my first post.) I’ve given him some info from other posts here, but at the moment he is being advised by someone; in fact, the laptop is in that person’s hands right now.

I’m sorry that my knowledge isn’t enough to even answer questions. It has been very frustrating for us. We keep saying, “It shouldn’t be this hard,” something I still believe. Thanks for the posts. I’ll give them to DH.

[bill]

Ethernet cable

I was suggesting you plug a LAN cable from your router directly into the laptop. Then you could test whether it was a wireless issue or a problem with your router.

the laptop has a wireless thing (?) in it

Put the laptop near the router and test with and without your extra wireless card.

Don’t know what OS means.

Operating System
I'm guessing you're running Windows. Do you know which version? XP? Vista?

[Samizdata]

This may not be relevant to your case, but I have seen it happen more than once.

Check that you are connecting to your OWN wireless router - and not to a neighbour's.

Routers usually have a default name for the wireless connection or SSID, and for Linksys routers it is "linksys". Linksys is a popular brand and it is likely that several households in your area have a Linksys router, and that some (including you) may not have changed the default name.

If so, log in to the router (see the user manual for details) and change the SSID to BeeJay (or something else unique to you) and try connecting to that.

If that solves the problem, add WPA authentication (a password for access).

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